Quote Originally Posted by Glass Mouse View Post

This confuses me. It sounds like you're criticizing me for preferring a more friends-to-lovers approach to dating.

I mean, if someone doesn't like being in limbo, they could... y'know... just ask for a date?
My point isn't to criticize you, but things are less simple and straightforward than you're making them out to be. At least in my experience. Let me clarify: A lot of women still expect men to take the initiative, but also expect to preserve a certain level of plausible deniability and ambiguity. So yeah, one could be straightforward and explicit right from the start and that's probably the best way to go, but this often does not conform to the expections of a lot of women. So as a guy you basically have to take the initiative, invest a lot of time and effort in courtship to prove yourself and all the while you're not quite allowed to clarify things because the expectation is that ambiguity must be preserved. That is not a fun situation to be in, but it is the reality for a lot of men.

Uhhh. Yeah. I'm gonna stay out of the gendered misery contest. It's not gonna end well.
I'm not making this a contest? It isn't. The concerns of group A do not invalidate the concerns of group B regardless of which concerns are worse. I'm just pointing out that, while it doesn't invalidate the concerns women have in any way, this one thing is something that heavily favors women.

Allow me to share a story of my own to better clarify where I'm coming from. Years ago a woman who knew I was into her asked me on a 'sort of' date (note the ambiguity). I didn't take go for it right away, but I asked for clarification the day after and got confirmation that it was meant to be a date. So I suggested a date myself then and there and I took care to be straightforward and explicit (e.g. use the word 'date') and she consented. There was no misunderstanding or ambiguity there. Yet one or two weeks later she pretended as if we never had that conversation to begin with. Even though there was no ambiguity, this woman still pretended there was and exploited it for her own benefit at my expense. I didn't call her out on this, because there simply didn't seem a point to it, but you can imagine that this sort of thing is very frustrating and left me without any sort of recourse.

Now this may be a more extreme example, but this isn't an isolated case. This kind of behavior and the underlying attitude is something I've encountered and seen time and again. This is the sort of thing I was talking about when I responded to you.